Goodness, it's been four long years now since this thread was first posted. I discussed everything from begging Blizzard to virtual machines, but we finally found some convenient working solutions. Being the gentleman I am, I felt compelled to come back and update this thread once more to bring all the links and file attachments right here to the very first post for your convenience. You can grab them below, but first an important note or two before you try to hop into LAN games.

IPX Wrapper:Recommended. This fix is more reliable for being able to see and join games, and currently works as far as Windows 8. Just be aware that -every- computer trying to connect must use it in the game, or you won't see each other. Credits to zebluk for finding this solution.

UDP for Diablo & Hellfire: This fix replaces the option to connect to Battle.net with Local Area Network (UDP). It doesn't seem to work on Windows 8. I've also had some trouble with games not being visible to join unless they were very recently hosted, so if you use this everyone may need to join fast, and don't count on being able to rejoin for sure. It's a little moody but it works. Credits to the teams behind the mods The Awakening and The Hell for the UDP files for Diablo and Hellfire, respectively.

Lastly, if you're playing the original Hellfire v1.01 without modifications or updates you will find the Multiplayer option is disabled. To use these fixes with Hellfire v1.01, you need to download the updated hellfrui file attached below that re-enables it, or update to one of the unofficial Hellfire patches or mods that generally include fixes for bugs that remain in v1.01.

If the reason you're sticking with v1.01 is that you're not fond of mods that change a lot of stuff, I would personally recommend Marsh's Unofficial Hellfire Mod v1.02 (also available here in The Lounge), which consists mostly of pure fixes to enhance the original Hellfire experience. The few things that are questionable changes, it lets you easily disable if you didn't like them and can use a text editor to modify one of the files that comes with it. At the time I write this, Marsh hasn't been around for awhile, so I also posted an update to his mod with more fixes - but it's buried a few pages deep in his thread. Look for it if you're interested.

Below are the fixes to download. The Diablo and Hellfire UDP patches are in one file, but seperated into Diablo and Hellfire folders respectively. Just use the ones you need. You don't need the hellfrui file update UNLESS you are running plain Hellfire v1.01.

Download count that was erased when this was uploaded to first post:
UDP for Diablo: 318
UDP for Hellfire: 176
hellfrui update: 32

Quote:Short of a user fix restoring IPX functionality for the latest version of Windows (which would be great since it'd restore several other multiplayer titles that are also limited to IPX, but seems unlikely since nobody seems to have managed it for Vista since it came out), some form of petition or miracle convincing Blizzard to patch working LAN protocols into their older titles, or a trustworthy alternative to classic Battle.net, I fear the Diablo disc case will migrate from the multiplayer fun section to the single player fun section sometime within the next several years.

Don't even bother with a petition. There aren't enough Diablo players left, and if Blizzard were going to patch Diablo again, they would have done it a long time ago. Just use one of the various IPX emulators available such as Hamachi.

IPX may not be the biggest concern. Our luck may be running short when it comes to DirectX and backwards compatibility. I tried the Win 7 beta some months ago, and no matter what I did I could not get Diablo to use the right palettes. Is anyone running Diablo on Win 7? Well sooner or later, I guarantee these graphics methods are just not going to be handled right anymore, and there is no financial incentive for Blizzard to do an update.

If you have strong nostalgia for old games like Diablo, Baldur's Gate, etc., don't be too quick to trash your old junker computer when you upgrade to a new one. Keep that glide video card or the Soundblaster with EAX. Put the box in a corner some where, hope you don't have a hardware failure, have some fun while it lasts. Someday we may be playing all these games on emulated environments, but who knows what features they will or won't be able to support properly?

Quote:Don't even bother with a petition. There aren't enough Diablo players left, and if Blizzard were going to patch Diablo again, they would have done it a long time ago. Just use one of the various IPX emulators available such as Hamachi.

I wasn't endorsing a petition, I mentioned it as more of a joke. And Hamachi is not an "IPX emulator", it is a virtual private network. It communicates using the protocols installed and working on your system just like a real LAN; if you do not have the IPX protocol, your system will not communicate IPX data over Hamachi (or any other network). Hamachi alone doesn't magically make IPX games work.

Quote:IPX may not be the biggest concern. Our luck may be running short when it comes to DirectX and backwards compatibility. I tried the Win 7 beta some months ago, and no matter what I did I could not get Diablo to use the right palettes. Is anyone running Diablo on Win 7?

I'm glad you asked, because I had this same problem with the Windows 7 Release Candidate and fixed it.

The color palette issue seems to be caused by the explorer shell (your Start Menu, Task Bar etc.) running in the background. The fix is a simple batch file in the Diablo folder that you launch Diablo with:

Quote:I'm glad you asked, because I had this same problem with the Windows 7 Release Candidate and fixed it.

The color palette issue seems to be caused by the explorer shell (your Start Menu, Task Bar etc.) running in the background. The fix is a simple batch file in the Diablo folder that you launch Diablo with:

Quote:Thanks. That is a very undesirable workaround in my opinion, but I suppose it would be better than trying to play with everything bright magenta.

I hear that... I wish it were as simple as ticking the 256 colors box in the compatibility tab, but being able to correct the colors at all is better than the Diablo disc essentially becoming a drink coaster in several years.

On the bright side, a friend of mine who got the full version of Windows 7 did NOT encounter this color palette problem. It could be the different hardware, but I have my fingers crossed the issue was exclusive to the pre-release versions of Windows 7.

Quote:Almost all of my Windows games work reasonably well in Vista 64 (except Chessmaster 5000 and Kings Quest VII) after some workarounds, and DosBox has made some nice advances for pre-Windows era stuff.

Ah, good ol' DOSBox. At least those IPX games will live on. Although I never got around to trying all my games with the Windows 7 Release Candidate, I had trouble with a King's Quest game also... Mask of Eternity? Come to think of it, I recall most older Sierra games becoming problematic. Didn't age well. But just about every other game ran fine with Windows 7, and surprisingly few required the built-in XP SP3 compat mode on either.

I think Windows 7 is far more similar to Vista than MS would like the world to know, which may be a good thing for backwards compatibility. Hopefully Diablo and other vintage games will run for almost everyone.

The early King's Quest games run on DOSBox just fine. But the last one was a Windows game, and it used some resource or icon features of early Windows that prevent the game from loading on Vista. There does not seem to be any workaround. I'm not that big of a fan anyway... got the collection for cheap sometime to see what they were like.

Some early Windows apps ran in 16 bit or had 16 bit loaders/installers. The 64 bit versions of Windows run 32 bit apps but not 16 bit, so those games are out if you get the 64 bit version. That was the issue with CM 5000.

People rush to click the "compatibility mode" options, but usually it's not necessary or helpful. I think the only games I run in "compatibility mode" are C&C 95 and Red Alert. Getting all of the C&C games to work on Vista was a pain, but they do all work!

I'm sure it's pure nostalgia of being high school/college age at that time and having my first computers, but those computer games from the mid 90s will always be high on my lists. Those games defined the genres that are now stale, and you couldn't find anything like those games on the consoles of the day.

Quote:Then, would you explain how you do it? What version of Windows Vista, which version of Hamachi, and what (if any) other third party downloads?

Vista pro, and whatever was the latest version of Hamachi about 6 months ago. That's about when I did my last system reinstall, and I haven't gotten around to reinstalling Hamachi since as I can't find my Hellfire cd.:(

I can't think of anything else I would have installed that would have given me IPX.

EDIT:

Quote:Getting all of the C&C games to work on Vista was a pain, but they do all work!

When they released RA3, they released a free version of RA1 that had been rebuilt for later Windows versions.

You can set compatibility to Windows 98.
Then use a no-cd crack to play Diablo. The colors should be fine that way.
This however won't allow you to go on b.net.
For that, you'd still have to use the workaround that was previously posted.

I play mostly on my own in direct cable so I use the no-cd and 98 compatibility workaround.
It's interesting also because if you want to play Starcraft, windows 98 compatiblity is the way to go as well since it now doesn't require a CD.

I just wanted to let you know that I finally got at least one way to play Diablo via IPX working (and other multiplayer games confined to IPX protocol) on both Windows Vista & Windows 7. After several futile attempts to get IPX working natively in Vista & W7, I decided to think inside the box.

Yes, inside the box. VirtualBox. Clearly OS emulation isn't the most ideal or convenient solution to this problem, but it is much easier for the average user to configure VirtualBox and install Windows XP with it than configure and maintain something much more complicated, such as a dual-boot system.

I recently installed Windows 7 on my laptop, then installed VirtualBox and used it to install XP as a virtual machine that runs inside of Windows 7. VirtualBox was fairly user friendly and easy to adjust to, and once you install VirtualBox Guest Additions inside the virtual XP, you have XP running in a window and your mouse can glide from your W7 desktop right onto the XP desktop. It's beautiful, really.

But to get to the point. I installed and patched Diablo on the virtual XP system, installed and configured IPX protocols, then started a LAN game between my laptop and Windows XP desktop. Both games were able to see and join each other. It ran smooth as silk.

So, quite simply, if you have Windows XP laying around after you've upgraded to Vista or W7, I'd hang onto it, especially if you are into classic games. I had it up and running in about an hour. Might take someone else two or three if they're a little less tech savvy or can't be bothered to read some of the VirtualBox documentation.

The ONLY issue I had with this configuration is that fullscreen applications on the guest/virtual system run inside the host/real system's resolution. My laptop is a 1280x800 display and since Diablo runs at 640x480, it really didn't full up much of the screen. You can alleviate this some by reducing the host's current resolution - say to 800x600 - then Diablo takes up a good portion of the screen. And before someone asks, sorry, no, changing your video configuration to stretch the image to fill the screen doesn't work.

I realize this is an imperfect solution, but it is one that's somewhat accessible in terms of complexity and system requirements (the laptop is several years old; 2.0ghz dual-core processor, 2gb of RAM, 128mb NVIDIA). Considering the alternative to having ANY solution is no IPX-based multiplayer games on Vista or W7 at all (beyond modifying the games to use other protocols, obviously!), it's worth sharing.

Hope this helps someone else out there get some of their old multiplayer LAN favorites up and running again on their newer operating systems. Please post here if you find or develop better solutions, either for Diablo specifically or for all IPX games.

I have used it and it works great. You setup tcpcom on 2 or more computers, one of those with the "server" setting.

You then launch diablo and select multiplayer and then 'direct cable connection'. The other computers will see the game and be able to join.

I think this would be easier than dual booting into xp just to have access to ipx protocol.

Plus, since tcpcom uses tcp-ip, you can establish a game between people who are not on the same local network.
So, you could play with others over the internet and whatnot. So you could do this even when you can no longer play diablo 1 over battle.net, or if you wanted to play hellfire or one of the diablo hacked versions like TheDark or something over the internet.

It seems that noone mentionned IPXwrapper. This software is the cleanest solution I've seen yet to make old IPX games working on win7.

It basically does IPX-over-UDP simply by putting it's DLL files in the same folder as your EXE; no patching needed. You may tune it to use exclusively the network interface of your choice (ie Hamachi or whatever interface you're using) by running ipxconfig.exe just once; so, no messing with interface metrics needed neither.

Of course, if you use a network interface behind a router, you gonna have to open some ports. IPXwrapper use 2 fixed UDP ports IIRC, control & data (rtfm:), which makes it really easy to configure, and play good old Diablo over (V)LAN right away.

Hey zebluk, thanks for sharing that. I've never heard of it and from the looks of the page it's been around since early 2009. There are a number of Win-based IPX network games that will never enjoy DOSBox's IPX emulation, and don't enjoy enough popularity to likely ever see specific fixes for themselves, so a global solution is much more desirable to those of us with a library containing a significant number of Windows classics.

I'm going to give it a try. If it works for me I'll mention it here and edit in a note about it at the top of the thread.

Update: That works like a charm, for Blizzard games anyway. Don't be scared by the number of files in the zip, you should only need the four DLLs for most games.

Do note that according to the readme, any XP users need to also use this to play with Windows 7 users using the wrapper; XP's native IPX isn't compatible with it.

You seem to know the most about editing the Hellfire menu. I'm trying to add a Battle.net menu option to Hellfire. I want to use the Battle.snp from a Diablo 1.09b install in order to be able to connect to a PvPGN server. I don't need you to help me with all of it, I'm just wondering how the modders went about editing smackw32.dll, standard.snp, Storm.dll in such a way that adds UDP. I'd like to know the process, if possible. Could you PM me or reply here with the details? I'd really appreciate it. Any source code and files regarding this would help as well. Thanks again.

You seem to know the most about editing the Hellfire menu. I'm trying to add a Battle.net menu option to Hellfire. I want to use the Battle.snp from a Diablo 1.09b install in order to be able to connect to a PvPGN server. I don't need you to help me with all of it, I'm just wondering how the modders went about editing smackw32.dll, standard.snp, Storm.dll in such a way that adds UDP. I'd like to know the process, if possible. Could you PM me or reply here with the details? I'd really appreciate it. Any source code and files regarding this would help as well. Thanks again.

In case you hadn't noticed, the post you are replying to is over a year old. Belix has not visited the forums since 3rd Sept, 2012.